People are increasingly utilizing portable computing devices for a variety of tasks. Some of these tasks involve the capture of one or more images, or video, using at least one camera of a computing device. In order to obtain images of an acceptable quality, such as images with appropriate levels of brightness or contrast, various computing devices can utilize an exposure control algorithm to attempt to adjust the exposure of the camera(s) capturing the image(s). In conventional approaches, the algorithm is executed on a main processor of the device, and several iterations can be necessary to get to an appropriate exposure setting for current conditions. The latency introduced by each iteration can degrade the user experience. Further, the amount of power and resources needed to determine the appropriate exposure setting can be a significant, which can be particularly undesirable for portable computing devices with limited battery life or processing capability.